Shopify publishes one number. Your actual bill has five layers, and the interesting question isn't what Plus costs — it's the point at which Plus costs less than the plan below it. There are four separate ways that happens, and the arithmetic for each is below.
Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 per month on a three-year term, or $2,500 per month on a one-year term. Above a high monthly sales volume, billing switches to a variable platform fee based on revenue, reportedly capped near $40,000 per month. Payment processing, apps, POS licences and build costs are all separate.
That base figure is fixed rather than negotiable. Shopify moved to flat platform pricing in 2017 and the $2,300 and $2,500 tiers are quoted the same to everyone, so there is no advantage in shopping the platform fee between resellers. What can move is your card rate, and that depends on volume and history.
| Layer | What it costs | Paid to |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $2,300/mo (3-year) or $2,500/mo (1-year), or a variable fee at high volume | Shopify, directly |
| Payment processing | ≈2.15% + $0.30 per online card transaction in the US on Shopify Payments | Shopify Payments |
| Third-party gateway surcharge | ≈0.2% per transaction if a non-Shopify gateway is primary | Shopify |
| Apps | Commonly $350–$1,400/mo for mid-market brands | App developers |
| POS Pro | Included for up to 200 locations on Plus (≈$89/location elsewhere) | Shopify |
| Build and engineering | Project or retainer — our figures are published below | Your agency, freelancer or team |
Card rates vary by country and Shopify's public Plus page directs merchants to its sales team for current figures, so treat the processing numbers here as the widely-reported US position rather than your quote. American Express and internationally issued cards typically add around one percentage point.
Above a high monthly sales volume, Shopify Plus billing moves from the flat fee to a variable platform fee calculated on revenue. Shopify does not publish the threshold or the rates. Partner-reported figures put activation somewhere around $800,000 in monthly GMV, with rates near 0.35% on a three-year term and a cap around $40,000 per month.
Three things worth knowing about those numbers. They vary by contract and business model. B2B orders are rated differently from direct-to-consumer orders, so your channel mix changes the figure. And every published version of them, including this one, is second-hand.
We are stating them because merchants planning a budget deserve a starting point rather than silence. We are also telling you plainly not to build a business case on them. Get the numbers from Shopify's Plus team in writing, and treat any agency page quoting them as confident fact — again, including this one — with appropriate caution.
Shopify Plus costs $1,901 per month more than the Advanced plan at $399. That premium is recovered independently by any one of four things: third-party gateway savings at roughly $475,000 monthly GMV, Shopify Payments rate savings at roughly $543,000, POS Pro licences at about 21 retail locations, or expansion storefronts at about five additional stores.
Most guides treat the Plus decision as a feature question. For a finance team it is usually an arithmetic question, and the arithmetic has four independent triggers. You only need one.
| Trigger | The saving | Break-even |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party gateway | Surcharge falls from 0.6% on Advanced to ≈0.2% on Plus — a 0.4% saving on every order | ≈$475,000/mo GMV |
| Shopify Payments rate | Online card rate falls from ≈2.5% to ≈2.15% — a 0.35% saving | ≈$543,000/mo GMV |
| Shopify POS Pro | ≈$89 per location per month, included for up to 200 locations on Plus | ≈21 retail locations |
| Expansion storefronts | 9 included with Plus; standalone stores cost $399 each on Advanced | ≈5 additional storefronts |
Take the trigger that matches your business and check the threshold. A 40-store retailer clears the POS trigger twice over regardless of online revenue. A brand running four regional storefronts is close on the expansion-store trigger alone. A merchant in a category Shopify Payments cannot serve — some restricted industries are excluded entirely — is forced onto a third-party gateway, which makes the surcharge trigger the one that matters most.
If none of the four apply, and the features you want are not Plus-exclusive, Advanced at $399 is a defensible place to stay. We would rather tell you that than sell a build on a plan you do not need.
Merchants coming from Magento, WooCommerce or a custom build routinely compare a $2,300 Shopify bill against a $300 hosting bill. That is the wrong comparison, because the hosting bill is one line out of many.
| Cost you carry on a self-hosted platform | On Shopify Plus |
|---|---|
| Hosting and CDN sized for peak traffic | Included |
| SSL certificates | Included |
| Security patching across core, theme and extensions | Included |
| PCI compliance scope | Largely Shopify's |
| Backups, staging environments | Included — Plus adds unlimited staging stores |
| Uptime engineering for sale events | Included |
| Extension and plugin licences | Fewer apps needed; native features replace many |
| Developer time spent on maintenance rather than features | Redirected to features |
Add your own figures to the left column before deciding. For most brands already paying for managed hosting, a developer retainer and a stack of plugin licences, the honest comparison is much closer than the headline numbers suggest. Our Shopify Plus migration services page covers the replatform side of that decision.
Solo Media Group's rate is $150 per hour. We sell hour blocks from 10 hours at $1,500, monthly retainers from 20 hours at $3,000 per month, and defined projects on a fixed line-item estimate scoped up front, typically starting around $20,000. Billing runs against milestones, invoiced net 15.
| Engagement | From | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Hour block | 10 hours / $1,500 | A defined piece of work with a clear finish line |
| Monthly retainer | 20 hours / $3,000 per month | Ongoing engineering, optimisation and support |
| Fixed-estimate project | ≈$20,000 | Full design and build, migrations, B2B, POS rollouts |
We publish this because "contact us for pricing" wastes your time and ours. If $150 an hour is outside your range, you have learned that in ten seconds rather than after two calls and a proposal.
Ranked by how much they typically move a quote, largest first:
ERP, EDI, POS, CRM and finance connections. Each is scoped separately and each carries its own testing burden. This is the single biggest variable on most enterprise projects.
Rules that exist only in someone's head get discovered mid-build at build rates. A day spent writing them down before scoping is the cheapest day in the project.
A replatform adds data mapping, redirect planning and integration rebuild on top of the build itself.
Bespoke functionality costs more than configuration. Sometimes it is the only route; often an App Store app at 80% fit is the better economics.
Cleaning a decade of inconsistent product data is real work and is routinely left out of quotes, including by agencies that should know better.
Full brand-led design costs more than building from Figma files you already own.
Portals, pricing rules and expansion storefronts add build time.
Matters most on migrations, less on net-new builds.
All three are legitimate. They fail in different places, and the failure mode matters more than the rate.
| Freelancer | Agency | In-house | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost shape | Hourly, lowest rate | Hourly or project, mid to high | Salary plus overhead, fixed |
| Breadth | One skill set | Design, engineering, QA, retention | Whatever you hire |
| Availability risk | High — one person, one calendar | Lower — team continuity | Low until they resign |
| Best for | Small defined work | Builds, migrations, integrations | Continuous product work at scale |
| Fails when | The project outgrows one person | Scope is too small to justify overhead | You need a skill you did not hire |
The honest test is duration and breadth. A single well-defined task goes to a freelancer. A build or migration touching design, engineering, integrations and QA goes to an agency, because coordinating four freelancers is a project management job you did not intend to take on. Continuous product development at scale eventually goes in-house, usually with an agency alongside for specialist work.
A note on in-house maths: a fully loaded senior Shopify engineer costs considerably more than salary alone once benefits, equipment, recruitment and management time are counted. Compare total cost of employment against agency fees, not salary against fees.
An illustration, not a quote. A mid-market brand moving onto Plus with a full build:
| Line | Year one |
|---|---|
| Shopify Plus platform ($2,300 × 12) | $27,600 |
| Design and build (from) | $20,000+ |
| Apps (at $700/mo illustrative) | $8,400 |
| Ongoing retainer from launch, say 6 months at $3,000 | $18,000 |
| Payment processing | ≈2.15% + $0.30 per order — scales with revenue |
| Indicative first-year total excluding processing | ≈$74,000+ |
Two things brands consistently underbudget. The first is the retainer after launch — a build is the beginning of the engineering relationship, not the end of it, and stores that go quiet after launch stop improving. The second is app subscriptions, which accumulate quietly until someone audits them.
Written against our own interest, because a client who feels overcharged does not renew.
A lump sum hides what you could cut. Line items let you drop scope you do not need and keep what you do. We quote this way as standard, and you should expect it from anyone.
Run the four break-even triggers above. If none apply and your requirements are not Plus-exclusive, Advanced at $399 is a legitimate answer, and any agency that will not say so is selling a plan rather than a solution.
Migrations and rebuilds are the cheapest moment to delete apps nobody uses. Most brands carry several.
Bring analytics to the scoping call. Retiring dead pages with redirects is free; rebuilding them is not.
The cheapest hour in any project is the one you spend writing down how your pricing, shipping and fulfilment rules actually work.
The platform fee is fixed for everyone. Card rates move with volume and history, and that is where the real money is at scale.
Solo Media Group is a Platinum-tier Shopify development company — the top of Shopify's Service Track — rated 5.0 from 37 reviews on the Shopify Partner Directory. We have delivered 75+ replatforms and new builds since March 2018, and our clients generate more than $500M a year on stores we built.
On budgets specifically, one review is more useful than any claim we could make:
From $2,300 per month on a three-year term, or $2,500 per month on a one-year term. Above a high monthly sales volume, billing moves to a variable platform fee based on revenue, reportedly capped around $40,000 per month.
The platform fee is not. Shopify moved to flat platform pricing in 2017 and quotes the same figures to everyone, so there is no advantage in shopping it around. Your Shopify Payments card rate is a different matter and can move with volume and history.
Above a high monthly sales volume, Shopify bills a percentage of revenue instead of the flat fee. Shopify does not publish the threshold or the rates. Partner-reported figures put activation near $800,000 in monthly GMV with rates around 0.35% and a cap near $40,000 per month, but these vary by contract and should be confirmed with Shopify directly.
Advanced is $399 per month and Plus starts at $2,300, so the premium is $1,901 per month. That premium is recovered by third-party gateway savings at roughly $475,000 monthly GMV, Shopify Payments rate savings at roughly $543,000, POS Pro licences at about 21 retail locations, or expansion storefronts at about five additional stores.
There is no separate Shopify transaction fee when Shopify Payments is your primary gateway. Card processing in the US is widely reported at approximately 2.15% + $0.30 per online transaction on Plus — the lowest rate Shopify offers. Using a third-party gateway as primary adds a surcharge of roughly 0.2% on Plus, against about 0.6% on Advanced.
There is no single figure, because four different triggers can justify it independently. On payment savings alone the arithmetic works from roughly $475,000 to $543,000 in monthly GMV. On retail locations it works at about 21 stores regardless of online revenue. On multi-storefront operations it works at about five additional stores.
Frequently, once you count the whole stack. Self-hosted platforms carry hosting, CDN, SSL, security patching, PCI scope, backups, staging, extension licences and developer maintenance. Compare all of that against the Plus fee rather than comparing Plus against a hosting bill.
No. Since 2 April 2026 native B2B has been available on all paid plans, with company accounts, pricing catalogs, net terms and self-serve ordering included at no extra cost. Plus is required for unlimited catalogs, catalogs assigned directly to companies, and deposits or partial payments.
Yes, for up to 200 locations at no additional charge. On standard plans POS Pro is approximately $89 per location per month, which is why the break-even on POS licensing alone falls at about 21 stores.
Your primary store plus nine expansion storefronts under one organisation. Additional expansion stores beyond those are reportedly around $250 per month each.
Our fixed-estimate projects typically start around $20,000, quoted as a line-item estimate. We also sell hour blocks from 10 hours at $1,500 and monthly retainers from 20 hours at $3,000, at a rate of $150 per hour.
Platform fee, payment processing, app subscriptions — commonly $350 to $1,400 per month for mid-market brands — and an engineering retainer. The retainer is the line brands most often omit, and stores without one stop improving after launch.
A single defined task suits a freelancer. A build or migration spanning design, engineering, integrations and QA suits an agency, because coordinating several freelancers becomes a project management job. Continuous product work at scale eventually justifies in-house, often with an agency alongside for specialist work.
Paying to rebuild pages nobody reads, carrying app subscriptions nobody audits, and accepting a lump-sum quote instead of a line-item estimate. All three are avoidable before a contract is signed.
